Into Anacostia, D.C.’s Urban Jungle

Urban whites seem to have a special skill for avoiding the ghetto. Not just avoiding going there physically, but avoiding discussing it, even acknowledging it’s there. In order to maintain the illusion that the races are equal, you must purposefully blind yourself to huge swathes of most every city.

Washington, DC, is no exception. Just 2.5 miles from the US Capitol building is “Anacostia.” Whites, liberal and otherwise, tell newcomers never to go there, and to avoid the Green Line on the subway, which goes there. They never say why.

Let me try to explain why. Henry Wolff and I spent four hours taking pictures in Anacostia. We were the only white people. Here’s what we saw.

This is the empty shell of an elementary school, named for the late black radical, presumably to provide a “role model” and boost “self-esteem:”

“Welcome to Malcolm X, home of the Bulls.”

The school was relocated several years ago as part of the endless restructuring of public schools to improve performance and save money (it’s now called “Malcolm X @ Green”), but the old building has hardly been touched. The “inspirational” murals typical of ghettos cover the walls. While some of the murals encourage academic achievement, the majority are just pleas for students–elementary school students–to stay away from drugs.

This painting above is “banning” liquor (the bottle), smoking (a pack with one cigarette sticking out of it), and something else (which may be a six pack).

I believe they meant to write “astronauts.”

“Gynecologist” was one of the professions to which the students were to aspire.

Local vandals have complimented these murals with their own graffiti:

Police protection does not seem to prevent the graffiti:

The neighboring buildings are not doing much better. This apartment complex has several boarded up units:

The school is representative of the neighborhood: overwhelmingly black, decrepit, filled with multicultural murals, and fueled by innumerable government-funded attempts to improve the quality of life.

The ghetto is also littered with fancy libraries. The government seems to believe that spending millions of dollars on fine buildings filled with books will improve the literacy rates that schools cannot.

The library above cost over ten million dollars. The American Institute of Architects, after awarding it a prize, wrote: “A small-scale residential context provided the inspiration for the design of this new branch library, located in a low-income, underserved neighborhood in Washington, D.C. The project not only fulfilled programmatic needs, but also provided a stimulus for community pride and economic development.” A man was shot and killed just outside of it earlier this year.

This one cost over 13 million. Anacostia’s literacy rates still hover around 50 percent.

Inside the libraries are “inspirational” murals:

But the signs posted throughout the library told a less inspiring story:

Outside was testament to how well putting libraries in the ghetto works:

Later on we came upon an earlier attempt to cure illiteracy:

“Read your way up”

Right across from this derelict “library” was this government-funded sign:

Other signs of government involvement and dependency are everywhere.

The results are not inspiring. Garbage is often strewn about. Health clinics have security cameras, and abandoned buildings are everywhere.

The entire wall this mural is on, with its black workers, protesters, the continent of Africa, and Thurgood Marshall, is lined with barbed wire to keep out thugs who might break into the business behind it.

The corner of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X Avenues–the spiritual heart of Anacostia–proved poetic. It is home to this liquor store, which cashes checks and has a colorful parking lot.

The only cigarette brand the liquor store advertises is Newport. The corner of MLK and Malcolm X Avenues is not Marlboro Country.

Here is a mural on the side of the liquor store:

Across the street from the liquor store is Popeyes Chicken:

Back in the 1960s, James Burnham noted that, “For the liberal ideology, the domestic jungles are the merely temporary by-products of a lack of education and faulty social institutions, to be cleared up by urban renewal programs, low rents, high minimum wages and integrated schools.”

Half a century later, any trip to the ghetto is a reminder that liberal prescriptions cannot conquer biology.